Special food report: Durham A Day

If Charlotte streets are a ball of yarn, Durham is a tangled skein. You need a GPS to get from 15/501 to Duke Street, and even when the GPS says "you have reached your destination," you may be sitting there, yelling, "Where? Where is my destination?"

That just adds to the fun. Chapel Hill and Asheville may be hip, Charlotte and Raleigh may be all business. Durham is something else entirely. What Durham has is a food entrepreneur class, a lot of young people who came for college or fun and stuck around to do what they love. I spent last Friday trolling Durham, and I heard variations of this over and over: "The economy is lousy, there are no jobs. Might as well do what we love. And what we love is food."

I'll bring blog reports all week on a half-dozen places I tried. Starting with:

Scratch Baking, 111 Orange St. Phoebe Lawless started out selling her pies at farmers markets and opened a bricks-and-mortar bakery last year. Finding it isn't easy: Orange Street isn't actually a street, it's a brick-lined alley tucked behind the City Complex. If you see the bull statue near Mangum Street, you're a block away.

I've interviewed Lawless and was hoping to meet her, but she was out tending to a sick kitten. Her employees were happy to help, though. The menu is a bit quirky. One employee called the style simply "Phoebe's whims." She likes old-fashioned pies, like chocolate chess, and she likes seasonal pies, like fig and pear tarts. The drinks menu includes "Candy Milk" because Lawless' 5-year-old daughter likes to order steamed vanilla latte with a candy stick to stir it. So they put it on the menu so she could order like a big girl.

There's a whole chalkboard just devoted to local producers, and pies come and go so quickly. So check before you get your heart set on anything.

I went with the Shaker Lemon Pie, one of Lawless' favorites in the category of "rescued farmhouse recipes."

You have to really, really love lemon. Luckily, I really, really do: The filling is creamy and yellow with a taste of buttermilk, and it's filled with strips of lemon peel. The crust literally flakes when you press down with a fork. It's bitter and sweet, creamy and crunchy.

Truly fine pie. And a fine place to start off a Durham eating day.

Next up: The Food Truck Revolution.

Food label "keys": Out of tune?

The Food Marketing Institute and the Grocery Manufacturers of America announced new label "keys" this week, a code on the front of packages that will give you a quick rundown on things like calories, saturated fat, sodium and dietary fiber. Hailing it as a voluntary effort by food makers, the two groups said it's a move to answer consumer demand for more information. Here's FMI's one-page explanation of the new labels: http://bit.ly/gcOBlr

But complaints are quickly cropping up that the new labels are just an attempt by manufacturers to make it more difficult, not easier, to tell which products are poor choices. Marion Nestle, New York University professor and a frequent commentator on nutrition policy, explains that side of the argument in her column, here: http://bit.ly/fDOUxI

Take a look at both sides and see what you think. Is this a guide that you will find useful, or just more "white noise" that makes it harder to navigate the grocery store aisles?

Grab a bag - it's wine-sale season

Ah, the holidays - all that frenzy, all those decisions. Not the Christmas holidays. I've started celebrating my own special season in January: Wine-sale season.

There are mini-wine sale seasons through the year. Stores usually have a lot of markdown at the end of summer to clear out space for the fall releases, and sometimes they run big sales for reasons I can't fathom without a marketing degree. But the one I watch for is in January, when supermarkets clear out old vintages to make space for the new stuff.

Harris Teeter is always a big player, although I've also celebrated the season at other stores. Earth Fare usually is a good hunting ground, too. But I know it's wine-sale season when I see those big blue tags hanging off the Teeter shelves. I make a point to start bringing my bottle-bag into the store and warn my grocery haulers at home that I'll be bringing home extra bottles for a few weeks.

Think of it like an Easter egg hunt for grownups: I troll the tags, looking for the big numbers. Forget $2 or $3 off. I fish for $5 off or higher, I always stop at $7-off and $9-off is my personal "cha-CHING." I don't always bite, though. $10 off on a $50 wine is still out of my league. But $10 off on a $20 bottle is 50% off - very enticing.

I generally stick to wines, regions and labels I know, but when a $25 wine comes down to $15, I'm willing to take chances. I've been burned occasionally, but never badly. This weekend, I scored two cabernets and a zinfandel. The zin was a little oxidized, a bit brown around the edges, but it still had plenty of fruit. I'm not looking for wines to impress, just stuff in a comfortable price range for weeknights, a glass of red to go with a plate of pasta or something from the slow cooker.

Maybe it's not everybody's idea of a season to celebrate, and I certainly get even more excited about asparagus season. But in January, it's the little things that count off.

Charlotte Food world: What's going on

• Cooking Uptown classes fill up fast, so they announce them early. The April schedule kicks off knife skills on April 2, and the month continues through "Spring in France" on April 30. Prices and times vary; go to http://www.cookinguptown.com/ or call 704-333-7300. Cooking Uptown is at 1707 E. 7th St. in Charlotte.




• For all of you have been asking for hands-on cooking classes for kids, Cooking Uptown is going to offer them for the first time this summer. The classes will be $195 for four days and include a chef hat, apron, take-home booklet of recipes and an awards ceremony at the end. The web site and number are above.




• "Forks Over Knives," a documentary on the health issues involved with a diet of an animal- and processed food-based diet, opens nationwide in March, but there will be an early screening in Charlotte at 4:30 p.m. Feb. 5 at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, 920 N. Sharon Amity. Tickets and details: www.forksoverknifes.com/screenings.




• Chef Carrie Leonard of Johnson & Wales University's Charlotte campus, will teach a 12-class series of videos on classical culinary techniques that will be available on Time Warner Cable's Video on Demand channel. The series is free and available on the Carolina On Demand channels, 199 or 1047.




• You've heard of an open house. The Inn at Celebrity Dairy is having an Open Barn from noon to 5 p.m. Feb. 12 and 13 and March 12 and 13. If you feel like taking the easy drive to Siler City, you can buy lunch and goat cheese and see the goats. $10 donations for Heifer Foundation International are requested but not required. Details and directions: http://www.celebritydairy.com/ or 919-742-5176.


• Oh, and one more I should mention: I'll be a guess on Tuesday, WFAE's "Charlotte Talks" on the subject of food in the New South. Turn in at 9 a.m.

Good Food Awards: Carolina winners

The first Good Food Awards kicked off last week in San Francisco, with Alice Waters and thousands of food fans in attendance at the Ferry Plaza Building. The Good Food Awards Seal was awarded to 71 artisan or small-batch products from 26 states. The seal recognizes contributions toward "a more tasty, authentic and responsible food system in urban and rural communities throughout the nation."

There were a sprinkling of winners from the Carolinas in the seven categories. Surprisingly, there were no home-states winners in the beer, cheese and chocolate categories (we have some mighty good contenders in all three). And most of the winners were clustered in the Triangle - maybe next year we'll see some well-deserved attention for producers in the mountains and the Piedmont. But we had winners in charcuterie, coffee, pickles and preserves:

Charcuterie:

• Cypressata from Cypress restaurant, Charleston.
• Sweet potato liverwurst, from Weeping Radish Farm Brewery, Grandy. (I haven't seen the liverwurst locally, but Weeping Radish hot dogs and a few other things are sold by Gilcrest Natural Farms at the Charlotte Regional Farmer's Market.)

Coffee:

• El Aguacate, from Carrboro Coffee Co., Carrboro.
• Finca Kilimanjaro, Counter Culture Coffee, Durham. (Counter Culture has an office and does tastings in Charlotte, and many of its coffees are available at Earth Fare markets.)

Pickles:

• Spicy Green Tomato, from the Farmer's Daughter, Carrboro.

Preserves:

• Bourbon'd Figs, from Farmer's Daughter, Carrboro.

For details, including information on who's behind the awards and Good Food Month, go to www.goodfoodmonth.org.

Blenheim report: Nice writing, Salon

Food writer Francis Lam did a tasting of ginger ales and ginger beers and weighed in on Carolinas-based Blenheim's:

"It's like drinking pins and needles. Like drinking down a sneeze. The flare goes back up your throat, through your nose, and for a moment, you are breathing Godzilla's nuclear blast. OK, that's probably overstating it, but if, like, Godzilla had a pilot light for his nuclear breath."

And he meant that in a good way. I'm with you, Francis. And I can tell you that Blenheim's Old No. 3 is a great mixer with bourbon. Makes a high ball that will keep you warm all winter.

Tasting: Poppy's Bagels

I'm a popular girl in my office. Since I eat for a living, I share a lot of leftovers. But now my colleagues have a new reason:

I bring the good bagels.

Poppy's Bagels opened in Providence Plaza on Providence Road near Sharon Amity in mid-November. Way to locate: If you drive uptown on Providence with the morning herd, you know that intersection is like the stocked fishing stream of office workers.

The first time I stopped in, Poppy's felt familiar. It's like the little bagel shops all over New York. They decorate the bowls of cream cheese with flower designs, they have whitefish salad, and the cooler is stocked with Dr. Brown's. And the bagels are right, with that shiny, crackly crust and chewy interior.

Ronnie Rippner grew up on Long Island and lived all over Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn before he moved down here four years ago for all the reasons most people from the Northeast head South: Lower taxes, bigger houses for the money. Like a lot of people, he used to be in banking. To learn the bagel business, he found a guy in New York to teach him the ropes.

They make the bagels on the premises, including boiling and baking. Back when Charlotte didn't have real bagels (yes, I'm old enough to remember it well), people used to say you couldn't make New York bagels here because the water isn't the same. Rippner heard that, too, but says it hasn't turned out to be the case. The tangy cream cheese has been particularly popular at my office. They get it from a wholesaler, but they mix their own flavors.

One more thing Poppy's has that keeps me stopping in: Rippner's mother, Georgeanna. A native of Hungary, she came down from New York to open the shop. She spots the regulars quickly and chats with everybody. It's like stopping by 28th Street for portable breakfast while I'm driving to Stonewall and Tryon.